A Juggling Mum

Merry Christmas from my family to yours!

1. Tidy the house - Check
2. Wash the clothes - Check
3. Wrap up last minute gifts - Check
4. Bake Christmas Cookies with the kids - Check
5. Listen to Christmas Carols - Check
6. Watch the Santa Claus 3 with the kids - Check
7. Decorate the Christmas cookies - Check

All that is left to do today is to make dinner and then snuggle up with the kids to watch Shrek the Halls and Carols by Candlelight on the TV.

I’d like to wish all my lovely bloggy friends a very Merry Christmas, I hope you all have a wonderful day!

Our annual Family Christmas Party was held on Sunday and it was so much fun! Now that we are all getting older, getting married, having families and adding partners to the group, it is getting harder and harder to come together on Christmas Day. So we organise a day before Christmas to all get together, have Christmas lunch and exchange presents and of course dress up. We keep our dress ups a secret until the day to make it more interesting!

This year Rob, the kids and I dress up as a Nativity Scene. I was Mary (of course…lol) Rob was Joseph, Chloe, Riley and Clare were the 3 Wise Men, Sophie was Baby Jesus and Caitlin was the angel. Here’s a photo:

Other family members came dressed as Christmas trees, presents, Santa, a candle, a Christmas shopper, and the Little Drummer Boy!

It’s getting harder and harder to come up with something new and different each year, so I’m going to have to put my thinking cap on now in preparation for next Christmas

Can you believe it?

Christmas is less than a week away!

I’m quite proud of myself. I have purchased presents for my family and they are all wrapped and ready. I’m not going to be up until midnight on Christmas Eve wrapping presents this year……. yay!!!!

Tomorrow I will be shopping for food for our family Christmas Party which will be on Sunday. It should be a great day. You may have read in one of my earlier posts that we all dress up for this party and it is great fun. Our costumes are all here, I just need to make a few minor alterations which I will do tomorrow and we will be set to go. I can’t tell you what we are all wearing yet, because I have nosey relo’s that read my blog But I will be sure to get someone to take some photos and I’ll post them here next week.

We have started a new tradition here this year. We have started Popcorn Friday! Which is just a movie afternoon on Fridays after school. We all get our pillows and spread out on the lounge room floor with a big bowl of popcorn and watch a Christmas movie. So far we have watched Barbie’s Christmas Carol, The Santa Claus 1 & 2 and tomorrow we are going to watch The Santa Claus Movie. I think we will continue our popcorn Fridays throughout the year because it has been lots of fun!

Tomorrow is the girls last day of school. They are quite excited about it, but I know that they will miss their friends and their teachers. We got their reports and I was very pleased with all of them. All 3 girls are going really, really well, so we are very proud of them.

We have a bust weekend ahead of us, Saturday night we have Riley’s Preschool Christmas Party at a local kids indoor playground and then on Sunday we have our Family Christmas Party.

Next week I plan on taking things easy and enjoy spending time with the kids making Christmas crafts and baking Christmas cookies. I also have a few other little Christmas projects that I need to finalise before Christmas Day, but again I can’t mention them because of nosey relo’s

It has always concerned me that my kids were not eating enough vegetables. I have never had a problem getting them to eat fruit but when it comes to vegetables that’s another story!

Until……

I discovered The Sneaky Chef!

I first heard about Missy Chase Lapine (aka The Sneaky Chef) while listening to Vicky and Jen’s What Really Matters Podcast. It sounded interesting so I ordered her book from Amazon. As soon as I got it, I rushed out the supermarket to buy some supplies and made up some of the puree’s in her book.

I have made a couple of her recipes up now and have been very impressed. The Chocolate Brownies were delicious and devoured by all the family and the best thing was that hidden inside were blueberries and spinach….. non of the kids had a clue!

Some other recipes that we have tried were the meatballs that hid spinach, broccolli and peas , the burgers that had blueberries and spinach in them, and the chicken tenders with sweet potato and carrots in the coating mix.

My kids have gobbled up these meals and even Rob and I have enjoyed them and it’s good to know that the meals that I am preparing are really healthy for us.

You can find out more about the Sneaky Chef by visiting her website, she even has some free recipes there.

No where really exciting to be honest! Sorry, did you think this post was going to be exciting???? hehehehe!

I can’t believe that I have neglected my poor little blog and my beloved readers for so long, I’m sorry! The truth is that I have been busy, busy preparing for Christmas, busy trying to stay on top of all the household things and busy planning meals and making things from scratch to save us some money.

I can’t believe that Christmas is almost here. I know I say it every year, but I’m sure the year is getting shorter and shorter. I really wanted to have all my presents bought and wrapped by the 1st of December but it didn’t happen. I do have most of them, and the ones I have are wrapped, but I’m not finished just yet. I’m hoping to have everything bought by this Friday though.

I have also been making some things which I will be giving to some members of my family. I can’t really talk about it yet though because many of them read my blog.

Each year my Mum’s side of the family get together just before Christmas to have our Christmas celebration and last year I started the tradition of getting everyone to dress up as something festive. We had a Plum Pudding, candy cane, a santa sack, angels, elves and Christmas Fairies, so the pressure is on this year to come up with something new. I know what Rob and I and each of the kids are going to dress as, but now I just have to get and make the costumes. Thankfully Rob has agreed to help me and has even offered to sew some costumes. Apparently he is able to use a sewing machine, this is something that in the 12 years we have been together I have never found out about. I will be sure to add some photos to my blog after the big event for you all to see, sorry I have to be secretive but those nosey family members may read this and copy my ideas……. ahahahahahahaa

Before I go, I want to give a shout out to Jill (Hi Jill who sent me an email a little while ago, telling me that she had been reading my blog for a while and discovered that her daughter goes to preschool with Riley when her daughter recognised him in one of my photo’s. (It’s such a small world!) Anyway, I finally got to say hello to her today face to face. I’m looking forward to chatting to you more at the Preschool functions